Oswego

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

All in!!!

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Keep your wolf on a leash!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOLF SHOT IN STERLING MAY HAVE BEEN CAPTIVE ANIMALThe 99-pound canine shot by an upstate man last month has been identified as a wolf, but a pathologist says it probably was once in captivity.John Yuhas awoke April 12th to find the wolf attacking and killing his dog in the town of Sterling, about 32 miles northwest of Syracuse. Wolves were thought to have been exterminated from the wilds of New York State a century ago.After examining the carcass, state wildlife pathologist Ward Stone tells the Syracuse Post-Standard said it was a wolf, though DNA samples will be tested to confirm that. It also had heartworms and was a little chubby.Says Stone, "It appears to have had recent experience with captivity." (Associated Press)

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Unlike Westchester, upstate Oswego welcomes nuclear powerBy MICHAEL RISINITTHE JOURNAL NEWS(Original Publication: June 26, 2005)OSWEGO, N.Y.The cooling tower at Constellation Energy's Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station rises 543 feet above Lake Ontario. Like a giant concrete anthill, the structure is easily visible from the rolling County Route 1 or the bluff above Wrights Landing Marina in nearby Oswego.On the edge of the country, Constellation operates two nuclear reactors. Next door, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owner of Indian Point in Buchanan, runs the James A. FitzPatrick plant. With the nuclear industry gearing up to plan the country's first new reactor in more than three decades, government leaders are practically begging to turn the lakeshore trio into a quartet. Save for the Great Lake, the concrete monolith is the local landscape's most prominent feature — and a possible lightning rod."I was part of the movement to stop nuclear power," said Theresa Freeman, 57. "For this country to go back and try to reclaim nuclear power as an energy source is insane."Freeman leaned into her words, sitting with three friends on a recent morning in front of the downtown Port City Cafe and Bakery. Decaf or not, she was vehemently against another reactor on the nearby lakefront. The women grew up in Oswego, but Freeman now lives in Berkeley, Calif. The almost 3,000 miles between her and the other women is enough to separate their thinking."The friends who still live in Oswego would love a new plant," said Maureen Sullivan, Oswego County's personnel director. "It means work."That's the conclusion of Oswego Mayor John Gosek, the Oswego County Legislature and Rep. John McHugh, R-Pierrepont Manor, all of whom support another plant in the neighborhood — an about-face from Westchester County, where calls for Indian Point's closing are the usual refrain.This month, Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano released a $385,000 study asking for Entergy's voluntary shutdown of Indian Point. In April, the Oswego County Legislature passed a "Resolution in Support of the Nuclear Power 2010 Program." The year is a reference to when construction may start.The pleas upstate are aimed at a nuclear power consortium called NuStart, of which Constellation and Entergy are members. NuStart will choose two sites from a list of six — including Constellation's property outside Oswego — for which to apply for licenses to build and operate nuclear power plants. The other locations are in Maryland, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Final selections are expected by Oct. 1, said Carl Crawford, a NuStart spokesman."Community support will always be an important factor in such a decision by NuStart or any other nuclear-operating company," Crawford said in an e-mail. "I've heard some senior nuclear energy executives say a company would never build a new plant in a community that didn't want it. Most communities want a new nuclear unit for the benefit of relatively high salaried staffs, local contract purchasing, and the millions of dollars in new property taxes paid."Once considered dead following the partial meltdown of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979 and the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, the nuclear industry may be headed for a resurrection. The revival is benefiting from the Bush administration's desire to revitalize the nuclear power industry — an energy source the president has characterized as clean and safe — and spur the building of new plants. The last nuclear power plant to come online was the Watts Barr plant in Tennessee in 1996, and the last permit for a new plant was issued in 1979.Oswego and a nearby namesake state university sit about 220 miles north of White Plains. A healthy downtown boasts 19th-century brick buildings, two banks, a shoe store, a movie theater, a bookstore and several eateries. A Lafarge Corp. cement distribution terminal and the twin stacks of Oswego Harbor Power share the waterfront with parks, boats and historic sites. Empty storefronts are almost nonexistent, and a weekly farmers market draws hundreds.Nuclear power on the lakeshore has existed since 1969, and the final reactor went into service in 1986. Similar to the Indian Point nuclear power plants, public utilities sold the Lake Ontario plants to private companies several years ago."When it's new, you worry about it," said Bill Bauer, 71, a lifelong farmer who has been bringing potatoes, radishes and rhubarb to the farmers market for 26 years. He lamented the 2002 closings of a nearby Nestle facility and International Paper plant, and the jobs lost with them."But they take so many (safety) precautions," Bauer said. "Another (plant) would help with jobs."Not everyone is lining up behind the mayor. The Central New York chapter of the Citizens Awareness Network characterized the Oswego Legislature's resolution as one that "undermined the safety and economic welfare of Oswego and all of Central New York." At the marina in Oswego, Phil and June MacArthur said the lakeshore didn't need another reactor. The two grew up nearby and recently returned after 25 years in Florida."If they want to bring more nuke plants here, they're going to have to wait until we're too old to fight," said Phil MacArthur, 59, who retired in May as a math professor from Florida Keys Community College.As at Indian Point, security has tightened since 9/11. Boating is prohibited nearby in Lake Ontario, and one can't freely pass from plant to plant on a lakeside road. To go from Constellation to Entergy requires a five-mile circuitous drive and another security check."You tend to hear 'Indian Point, Indian Point,' " said Jill Lyons, a Constellation spokeswoman, referring to industry chatter about nuclear plant opposition. "But the community (here) tends to be anti-anti-nuclear."One stark difference between there and here is population, which most likely plays a role in demand for jobs and worries about terrorism. More people live in Yonkers than in all of Oswego County, which is about twice the size of Westchester."A few thousand jobs down there don't mean a lot," said Gosek, Oswego's mayor. "But in a city of 18,000 people, when you put four to five hundred construction workers to work, your town booms."Spano, upon releasing the county-commissioned consultant's report on Indian Point, pointed to the region's population as to why the plant's operating licenses should not be renewed."We insist that the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) consider the current difficulties and realities if an emergency evacuation were to take place in a dense, congested population center with limited roadways, even though the area was not as developed when the facility was first constructed," Spano said in a statement.But for many in and around Oswego, nuclear energy means a paycheck. Colleen Caramella has worked at FitzPatrick for 18 years and said the plant gives her, her husband, Joe, (a five-year employee) and their three sons a stable life. Amy Skinner's husband is an operator at Constellation."I don't think there's any downside (to a fourth reactor)," Skinner said as her children, Garrett, 9, and Kelly, 6, swam in the family's in-ground pool, the plant's tower hidden behind the trees.Two doors down from the Skinners on County Route 1, 26-year-old Ted Volkomen mowed swaths of his parents' yard with a red Massey Ferguson tractor. The property shifts from lawn to meadow to woods, where the tower protrudes above the trees."It'd be more work around here. There's not a lot," said Volkomen, a pipe fitter.Back in downtown Oswego, the coffee klatch is a cross-section of opinions on local nuclear power."I'm not sure it was ever a good idea," said Mary Ann Masuicca, 57, who works at St. Joseph's Catholic Church. "But we've got three. So what difference would another make?"